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Monday, October 24, 2016

1:50AM

I
was in and out, weird dreams flooding my brain.
I was just short of something, can’t recall what; just adrift, barely
unconscious. A fitness program? My exercise wasn’t quite enough? Was that it?
No. Not quite. What?
Something was off. I looked at
the clock. 1:50AM. That was 2 hours, 17 minutes ago.

I’d guess I had fallen asleep at around
10:25, something like that. Now I was
lying awake with a serious neck ache. I
went to the bathroom. I adjusted my
pillow 100 times, trying not to rouse my wife.
I came downstairs and spent several minutes looking at the ESPN website
recap of the day in the NFL. I looked at
the new college football rankings, happy to see Michigan at #2. I tried sleep again. Back to bed, then up.

Finally, I came down at 3:3o. I did a few of the stretching exercises a
physical therapist showed me years ago when a painful stiff neck had become a
chronic problem. It’s weird. For my stiff neck, he had me stretching my
groin and hamstrings and tightening my core muscles and working on groin muscle
strength. It worked (or the neck pain
just went away on its own).

Either way, neck pain is not allowing
me to sleep tonight.

My friend Phil, a rock of a
Christian, a real saint, once chided when I bemoaned a bout of insomnia. I was whining on Facebook at 3AM (like I am
doing in this blog now), and Phil told me to “redeem the time, man!” He meant pray! Maybe he had in mind Psalm 119:148. “My eyes are awake before the watches of the
night, that I may meditate on your promise.”
Phil was right. Insomnia is an
opportunity to pray.

Yesterday (Sunday) morning, in my
sermon on Jonah, I remembered that in the storm (a literal storm at sea, or the
“storms” of life), we run into opportunity.
Dark, scary times, painful times are opportunities to meet God in
prayer. So too is this night of my
insomnia. I sit here awake, knowing how
tired I will be throughout today. But, I
don’t focus on that. I set my brain to
God. The Holy Spirit is here. It is good.

I will, in a moment, be back on the
floor, stretching, tightening core muscles.
I will, in the next moment, be back in my chair reading the Madeleine L’Engle
book I am reviewing. She’s writing about
the intersection of art and faith. It is
beautiful writing. But of course it
is! It is Madeleine L’Engle. Maybe, I will read Psalm 119 – all of it.

Before I get all that done, it will
be 5:30, 6:00AM. My 7-year-old daughter
will come down, eager to start the day because she loves riding the school
bus. She wakes up afraid that she’s
missed it. We haven’t needed an alarm clock in years. I am not always happy when she wakes so early. But, I love it when she comes to me as I sit
in my chair. She comes for a good
morning hug. Many days, it is the best
moment of the day.